Page 15 of Where You're Planted

“So what exactly is the deal with this hat?” he pressed. “It doesn’t even fit her.”

“One of the men on the boat put it on her. I didn’tremember to give it back until we were at the high school.” Theshelter. Maybe if she didn’t say it, she could still believe she wasn’t some damsel in distress, could still teach Briar with a shred of integrity that, as independent women, they were capable of saving themselves.

“So it’s some random guy’s hat? Why—”

“It’s like a security blanket. It must have helped her feel safe when he put it on her that night, and now, when she doesn’t feel safe…” Tansy frowned at the baffling truth thatJack, of all people, had comforted Briar.

“Jesus,” Charlie said under his breath, glancing at Briar through Tansy’s rear window. “You’re saying she doesn’t feel safe every day?”

“No, not exactly. Her therapist thinks it’s more of a habit. She reaches for it at the first sign of discomfort. But we’re working on other coping strategies. Breathing, movement, reframing. She’s not going to need it forever.” Tansyhoped, anyway.

“And this therapist, is he good? Is she seeing him enough?”

Tansy’s chin lifted in defense. “She’sgreat. We’re going plenty.”

“Because if you need money for more sessions—”

“I said we’re fine.”

Charlie swallowed, nodding aimlessly. If he flaunted his money again, she might just scream. Even though she knew he wasn’tflauntinganything. He cared. She shouldn’t hold that against him.

This whole new arrangement—her letting him take Briar for the occasional long weekend, or longer over school breaks—was only on the table now because he’d proven his commitment to being back in Briar’s life. Since his return to their lives, he’d agreed to supervised visits entirely on Tansy’sterms. She didn’t want to be the reason Briar didn’t have a relationship with her father. So she was trying.

“And you?” he asked, studying his shoes now. “You’re doing okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He was still doing the nodding thing, clearly distracted by some unspoken thought.

“Anything else?” she asked, turning back to her car.

He shrugged, but his mouth pinched to one side as he drew in a deliberate breath—a familiar tell that he was annoyed. “Just, you know, maybe you could keep me updated on this stuff.”

Tansy stopped short.Like you and the tablet?She pressed her lips together tightly. But who was he to take that scolding tone? This was why she still hadn’t given him more than a few days at a time. The second he asserted himself, acted like they were on an even playing field as Briar’s parents, she wanted to throw history in his face.

He sighed and raised his palms in apology. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just…missed so much. I want to be all in. That’s all.”

This erratic flux of emotions made Tansy feel crazy. She couldn’t deny, though, that if she’d told him about the hat before, he could have handled that situation differently, which would have been better for Briar. And that was what mattered most.Briar.

He reached for another perfunctory hug, although it didn’t feel entirely perfunctory when he resisted her immediate attempt to slip back out of it. “Tansy,” he said quietly, holding her close. She still knew his smell, a primal-level comforting mix of his cologne and laundry detergent that contradicted all the times he was not a comfort to her.

Sometimes, Charlie seemed to want a do-over with more than just Briar, although he hadn’t mustered the audacity to say so. Tansy hoped he wasn’t about to find it now because, despite her vow to never go there again, in her weaker moments, she’d imagined perfect-world scenarios where everything worked this time, where he stayed by her side, where she didn’t have to do everything alone. She knew how enticing—if absolutely wrong—that proposal would be.

“We’ll talk more,” she promised, slipping free and yanking open her door.

On the drive home, Tansy fought the urge to ask Briar a million questions while she read with her book light in the back seat. The impulse came from something stickier than curiosity, something rooted in anxiety, a need for control. Like if she could know about every second of Briar’s visit, she could scoop up all the little pieces of her she’d missed while they were apart.

It was the same feeling she got when she dwelled on all the belongings they’d lost, even though she’d cursed a million times after stepping on cheap, plastic Happy Meal toys on the floor and had felt zero attachment to Briar’s outgrown clothes that she’d meant to donate before the floodwater turned them into emotion-laden artifacts.

Anyway, these interrogations she held back would uncover nothing more than a loving, doting father whose worst flaw was that he hadn’t figured out how to be that eight years ago. She had to get better at these visitation handoffs. Shewouldget better at them. Sometimes, instead of fixating and worrying the whole time Briar was away, she imagined using their time apart torelaxfor a change, tonotworry about anyone else for a few days. Or to catch up on house projects. Or even, someday, to date again. Maybe.

But right now, the distance to that goal felt farther than the hundred and nineteen miles back home.

—

The weight on Tansy’s shouldersgained mass as they shuffled tiredly through their empty house that night, shoes scraping along the exposed concrete slab foundation, past the living room with no furniture or light fixtures, past the kitchen that held no appliances or cabinets, past Briar’s old empty bedroom, past walls that, according to the contractor Tansy could no longer afford, still needed to be “taped and floated,” whatever that meant.

She’d thought once they moved back in that at least this one thing, their home, would return to normal. But her insurance claim had been denied because she lived in a floodplain and didn’t have the special flood coverage she hadn’t known to get, FEMA had declared the house “livable” because she’d already used her savings on decontamination and mold remediation, and the only safety net she had left was one credit card she was uncomfortably close to maxing out. She could hardly breathe when she thought about it, the fear of losing the home she’d only just last year managed to buy, the shame of failing to do her due diligence before putting every penny she’d scraped together toward the home loan, the threat of having to crawl back to her parents like last time. That wasn’t an option.

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